Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs A United Nations commission on Thursday accused Israel of targeting hospitals and other health facilities in Gaza that provide reproductive services, including an I.V.F. clinic where thousands of embryos were destroyed, in what it called an effort to prevent Palestinian births.The report by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, called that and other actions that cause harm to women and girls “genocidal acts” and accused Israel of punishing Palestinians collectively for the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed 1,200 people.Israel’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva immediately rejected the report, saying in a statement that the commission was engaged in “a shameless attempt to incriminate” the Israeli military “to advance its predetermined and biased political agenda.” Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused the United Nations Human Rights Council of attacking the country with “false accusations.”The commission, set up by the Human Rights Council in 2021 and made up of three lawyers with expertise in human rights, said its report drew on earlier investigations it had carried out since the Hamas attack on southern Israel and on some 25 interviews conducted over recent months with medical experts, as well as victims and witnesses of the violence in Gaza. Some of the testimony was aired over two days of hearings in Geneva this week.The report marked the first time a United Nations committee has found that Israel has committed genocidal acts under the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court, and under the international treaty that criminalizes genocide.“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” the commission said.Israeli officials have long accused the rights council of singling Israel out, arguing that U.N. officials and committees condemn the country with far greater frequency than it does dictatorships like North Korea. In February, Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, said Israel would stop participating in the council, accusing it of demonizing Israel.The Israeli military’s bombardment and invasion decimated Gaza’s health care system in a way that aid groups and international bodies have called “systematic.” The report said this included damage to clinics and other facilities that provide maternity services affecting more than half a million women and girls of reproductive age in Gaza.Israel has said that Hamas fighters have embedded themselves in hospitals and other buildings. Under international law, if there is doubt about whether a hospital is being used for military purposes, it should be presumed not to be, according to the Red Cross, and civilians should not be targeted.The report cited in particular the destruction of Al Basma I.V.F. clinic, Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, which was destroyed in December 2023 by artillery fire, which is typically less accurate than missiles. The commission heard from expert witnesses that the clinic’s destruction caused the loss of some 4,000 embryos and other reproductive material from Palestinian patients for whom it often represented a last chance to have children.
